There is more to interactive marketing than just launching campaigns. Once you have published your campaign, it's also time to take a look at your campaign's performance, monitor your ROI and understand how to improve your future marketing operations. "But how do I do this?", we hear you ask. Fear not! In this post, you'll learn how to view and understand your campaign reports.
Viewing Campaign statistics
Once you get a campaign live, you can view related statistics.
About the Dashboard metrics
The Dashboard displays a summary of campaign performance so you can track its progress. Here's an example of what you might see in your Dashboard:
Participations
This metric indicates the number of "valid" participations that happened.
- In identified campaigns, a participation is considered "valid" when the form is submitted.
- If the form is shown after the questionnaire or game (default configuration), the participation will be counted only when the form is submitted. So even though a participant might have answered all the questions or completed/skipped the game, if they do not submit the form their participation won't be taken into account.
- If the form is shown before the questionnaire or game, the participation will be counted as soon as the form is submitted, even if the questions are left unanswered.
- In anonymous campaigns (that don't have a form), a participation is counted when all the questions have been answered (or when the game was completed/skipped), and the exit screen has been shown.
→ In the example above, 15,726 participations were recorded in your campaign.
Unique participants
This metric tells you how many different users took part in your campaign. A participant is considered unique based on the combination of three fields (the "trigram"): first name, last name and email address.
Remember that those three fields must have a CRM variable assigned to them to be recognised. All ID fields in Qualifio have a default variable assigned. However, if you create a new alphanumeric field named "First name" and it isn't assigned the {firstname} CRM variable, then we won't know it is the participant's first name.
This means that two participations that have the same first name, the same last name and the same email, will be considered as one person. Conversely, if two participations happen with the same first name, and the same last name, but a different email address – or the same first name, the same email address and a different last name, those will be considered different participants. Fields are not case-sensitive.
→ In the example above, 15,050 different users took part in your campaign. The remaining 676 participations came from users who had already participated in this campaign at least once.
New participants
When you get new leads, they will be shown as new participants in your campaign report. A new lead is, in fact, a new trigram (first name, last name, email) –and thus a new record within the Qualifio CRM. Every unique contact that never took part in a previous Qualifio campaign on your channels will be counted as a new participant. This is a good indicator of your campaign's success in attracting new prospects.
→ In the example above, statistics show that 4,199 new participants were recorded in the Qualifio CRM. They represent 4,199 new combinations of first name, last name and email. Some of the email addresses might already be known. However, they were used with a different first name and/or the last name and are thus considered a new contact.
Total page views
This metric tells you how many campaign pages were visited in total. A page view happens when a visitor views at least one of your campaign pages. So, for a campaign that is made of 4 pages (welcome screen, one-page questionnaire or unique question, form, exit screen): a website visitor that only views your campaign but doesn't take part in it will add a page view to your report. A participant that engages with your campaign but doesn't complete it might add 2 or 3 page views. Lastly, a participant who completes your campaign will add 4 page views to your campaign report.
The thing to know: In Google Analytics, your total pageview count goes up when a user clicks "reload" after reaching the page. In Qualifio, your total pageview count goes up only when a user lands on a page of your campaign, not when they click "reload". This is a very common reason why pageviews may appear incorrect.
Completion rate
Indicates the proportion of participations that went to the end of the campaign. This percentage is calculated by comparing the number of views recorded on the first page of the campaign (welcome screen or other) with the number of views recorded on the last page of the campaign (exit screen).
We also show the absolute number of participations that went to the final screen of your campaign. That is the number of views recorded on the last page of the campaign (exit screen).
→ In the example above, only 40% of users who saw the first screen of the campaign completed their participation in the exit screen. This means that 60% of them left before that exit screen. You can use the funnel to identify where most of them dropped out.
Opt-ins
The "opt-ins" cards calculate the total number of form submissions where the participant opted in. Use these cards to acquire greater insight into your opt-ins' performance.
There are five cards available to you:
- Newsletter & marketing: These opt-ins let you turn campaign participants into subscribers by asking them for permission to send promotions and offers about your products and brand. In general, the higher this number is, the faster you’ll grow your email list.
- Legal & rules: This one can be very useful for scenarios where you want to add an “I agree” checkbox with a link to your Terms and Conditions or Privacy Policy. It’s important to be able to enforce these agreements, so in general, you should have a 100% conversion rate on those, i.e. as many opt-ins as participations if you have one legal opt-in, twice as many opt-ins as participations if you have two legal opt-ins, and so on. You can also link to your contest rules.
- Partner: These are opt-ins to receive emails or offers from a specific third party. Participants can check a box entitled “I would like to receive offers from Company XYZ”, with that company usually being affiliated with yours (sponsor, partner or advertiser).
- Others: The opt-ins categorised in “others” are opt-ins that don't fit into any of the above categories. We recommend the “Others” category be used only in very few and specific instances.
- Uncategorised: The "uncategorised" opt-ins are opt-ins that have not explicitly been assigned to any category.
Note: When creating or editing an opt-in, you can choose a subcategory. This parameter will be used to report on the number of opt-ins in your campaign, so make sure you’ve set up your opt-in categories. If you haven’t, you will see your total number of opt-ins in the “Uncategorised opt-ins” card.
Important information
Let's clarify a few things really quickly:
- Keep in mind, if the total number of opt-ins is 0, then "opt-ins" cards will automatically be hidden. Hiding numbers that you just don’t need to see can make reviewing and analysing data a lot easier!
- The total number of opt-ins is calculated based on the opt-ins that were created in the dedicated section. It doesn’t include opt-out consents nor “I agree” checkboxes on the welcome screen. However, it does include double opt-ins not confirmed.
- You can figure out your opt-in rate by dividing the number of opt-in conversions by the total number of participations in your campaign.
Facebook shares
Before we can add Facebook sharing stats to your campaign reports, you need to turn on at least one of our Facebook social sharing options.
The Facebook shares stat reveals how many times participants shared your campaign on Facebook. This includes shares that were done thanks to sharing buttons, exit screen actions, incentivised shares, as well as shares of personality test profiles or football teams. This number does not include any shares that were made to Facebook by copying the campaign's URL and pasting it to the social network.
Participations waiting for validation
When email verification is used, the participation's status is "waiting for validation" until the participant confirms their email. Read more about how to use email verification →
IP addresses
In this section, you'll find the list of the IP addresses from which your campaign was accessed and taken part in. The IP addresses are hashed for privacy reasons. This is a good indicator of potential cheating or fraud, e.g. if 80% of your traffic comes from the same IP address. You can limit participations to your campaign by IP address →
My campaign results seem incorrect
Here are some things to keep in mind:
- Bad configuration: Identified campaigns without form and trigram fields without CRM variables assigned are common examples of bad configurations. When no value is found for the trigram (first name, last name, email), a default "John Doe" value will be used instead. This will result in a high number of participations but only 1 unique and new participant: John Doe.
- Participation limit: Did you set a participation limit while the campaign was already running? You might also have test participations that were not deleted before the campaign went live.
- Double tracking: That is, more than one Google Analytics tracking code on the page. If you put your tracking code on the parent page and the campaign frame, you could be loading one page but wind up with multiple pageviews firing. Each script records a new visit, even if they are on the same page. So: having multiple scripts per page can lead to inaccurate reporting.
- Poor connection: When end-users have a slow connection speed, it may result in problems loading the page and mess up your data, especially the number of page views.
- User disabled Javascript: When users disable Javascript, there is no way to track them due to the fact that, like most analytics tools, Qualifio relies on a Javascript tag to track pageviews, sending events from the participant's browser. This tag is asynchronous, meaning it is executed after the campaign has been loaded. If your participants disable JavaScript in their browsers to access your campaign (a common practice among professional compers), the tracking of pageviews will be affected.
- Reporting in preview mode: We sometimes hear clients questioning the validity of their data, and specifically, the count of page views. Keep in mind that the campaign preview link lets you see your campaign as your participants would, but any pages you view this way will not be counted. Test participations are however reported in the dashboard. This can be the reason your campaign page views are wrong. In order to avoid this, you should delete test participation records.